


Thursday night, 10:30

by Today_Tomorrow



Category: SHINee
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-14
Updated: 2020-04-14
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:07:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23652823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Today_Tomorrow/pseuds/Today_Tomorrow
Summary: Short thing about Jinki wanting to relax for once but seeing a ghost instead.warning: there is a ghost and a description of a ghost which includes minor body horror stuff so be careful if that's not your thing
Comments: 4
Kudos: 2





	Thursday night, 10:30

**Author's Note:**

> Hi I wanted to try doing something with ghosts and this was the result. I have no idea whether it's genuinely scary or anything but I tried to put some feeling into it. Maybe be careful if you don't like ghosts or descriptions of them (minor sort of body horror stuff). Anyway, I tried. Thanks :)

It was 10:30 on a Thursday night and everything was absolutely normal. Minho was out somewhere and so was Kibum, both working and having adult responsibilities and healthy work ethics and all that, Jonghyun was in his room and Taemin was doing something somewhere. But the most important thing to Jinki was that he was on the couch, the tv was in front of him and the soju was too but closer, within easy arm’s reach, and there was nothing expected of him other than laying down until 10:00 tomorrow morning. He had turned out as many lights as he could be bothered with, set up a candle on the table and gave himself over to total relaxation.

It was a perfect moment and he was dead set on enjoying it.

The tv flickered, some drama Jinki had only a vague familiarity with from hearing others alluding to it in passing, and he watched as someone’s mom scolded them for doing something wrong? Not doing something right? He couldn’t quite tell what she was upset about but she was livid and he was fully engaged in eating up the drama even if he didn’t have a firm grasp on what its source was.

He was right in the middle of wondering whether his face looked as good as hers when he was pissed off when someone shifted. A flicker of movement in his peripheral vision. Suddenly he became aware of a shape in the dark hall, in the corner of his eye – someone standing as if they had been there for a while. He couldn’t make out whether they were turned towards him, watching him, or turned away from him, staring down the hall with their back to him. And, for some reason he wasn’t even fully aware of, he couldn’t bring himself to turn his head towards the person in order to figure it out. Either way they were very still and there was something intent about the motionlessness. Like they were waiting, like they were watching. There was a hot-cold sort of tingling in his muscles and he felt tense, like he was about to leap into action, but unable to move at the same time, thrumming energy caged within a paralysed frame. The figure was as still as stone, standing in the doorframe, and Jinki realized he had only noticed them because they had broken that stillness to shift, move slightly, and it bothered Jinki extremely that he couldn’t remember what kind of movement they had made to draw his attention. But he had a feeling it had been deliberate. Like a hand raised slowly, rest of the body locked in silence.

“Taem?” His own voice made his body slick ice-cold with fear, blood freezing over in his veins and heart stopped dead. It was loud, it felt like it was echoing through the room, his ears, and then suddenly it was replaced by the heavy pounding of his heart in his throat, drowning out all other sound. 

“Yeah, hyung?” Taemin’s voice was faint, coming from somewhere down the hall. Who knows what room, what he was doing. It felt like Taemin was in another world, cut off from this reality and naively enjoying a safer world far away from Jinki and on the other end of the unlit hall. On the other side of the body occupying the doorway a mere seven steps from Jinki’s frozen position on the couch.

And then the body moved. Jinki felt adrenaline fueling the flinch that sent him to the opposite end of the couch and his eyes widened as he watched the figure slowly begin to walk in the madly wavering light of the candle. Jinki could feel its eyes on him, its attention weighing down on him. It walked like nothing Jinki had ever seen before, nothing he had imagined even in his darkest hours after watching Taemin’s horror movies at midnight. Each foot struck out blindly, uncertain yet violent, lurching the figure forwards as the arms stiffly moved, as if unable to bend. The back and shoulders looked – wrong, as if the muscles weren’t a part of the same body as the legs moving the figure forwards. They shifted and angled strangely, horrifically. Still with the unseen eyes trained on him, gaze physically oppressive. And then Jinki realized.

The figure wasn’t walking toward him. It was making its way down the hall. Towards Taemin.

Fear exploded in his chest and launched him off the couch, straight into the table. His mind was empty, shuddering and echoing in his skull and it was only fear moving him now. Fear shouted Taemin’s name. Fear grabbed the agitated candle from the tabletop. Fear took two steps forward. Fear held up the candle with shaking hands, stood with weak knees, wild heartbeat.

But it was Jinki who saw the figure come to a stop halfway down the hall, shrouded in shadow still. It was Jinki who, as if under some strange compulsion, pulled his phone from his pocket and turned on the flashlight. And it was Jinki who saw the man in the hall, back to him and facing the other end of the hall, left foot raised to take another lurching step away from him and towards Taemin.

But its head was facing Jinki, eyes wide and unblinking on him. Jinki stared and felt all the blood draining from his face, his neck. Its head was twisted completely around, facing the opposite direction as its body, neck broken, bones and tendons gnarled and knotted like an old, evil tree. Its eyes rolled and Jinki couldn’t look away from the bloody, torn skin where its eyelids had been, couldn’t look away from the distorted mouth, gaping and wider than a mouth should be and broken in a way that didn’t make sense, couldn’t be processed.

And then it ran. Scuttling wildly, lurching like an enormous spider down the hall with its head lolling sickly behind, the thing ran down the hall, a soft clicking sound the only accompaniment to the wild, disjointed cacophony of movement. Jinki’s empty mind lit up with a blinding flash of desperation and he shouted Taemin’s name, racing down the hall, vision blurring.

And then he was standing at the end of an empty hall, a confused Taemin patting his shoulder. “You called me, hyung? Is something wrong? You sounded – weird.” Jinki’s eyes darted all around and he felt like he had been struck by lightning when the hall lights flicked on suddenly and he saw Jonghyun walking towards them, having emerged from his room.

“What are you guys doing out here? It sounded like you set a tiger loose in here or something. Are you fighting? I don’t want to be dragged into it if you are.” Jonghyun looked like he had just woken up or had just emerged from some state of deep concentration. His door had been shut the whole time.

Jinki stared at Taemin. Taemin stared back, his confusion morphing slowly into concern, hand still on his arm. “Jinki-hyung, are you drun-“ Jinki cut him off, shaking his head with his eyes still wide and unblinking. Somewhere in his barely functioning brain, he knew he wasn’t putting up a very convincing picture of not being drunk but whatever. “Taemin, what were you doing just now?” His voice was thin, like he hadn’t drawn in enough air to speak properly, and he probably hadn’t as his heart raced, shaking his upper body, and his breath slipped in and out in uneven spurts. Taemin’s head dipped to the side but he seemed to decide to humour him. “I was just fixing the calendar, hyung, the tape was starting to curl and it was falling down. You had turned off all the lights so I thought I’d just leave them off – it’s not like taping requires a lot of light anyway.” Jinki stared at the calendar hanging on the wall beside them, freshly taped and straightened, and his eyes widened even further.

“So you were here in the hall the whole time?” he was whispering and he was starting to scare himself, a creeping, uneasy fear, a sense of dread replacing his adrenaline. Taemin nodded uncertainly. “Did you see anything?” Now he was starting to sound scared. Taemin brought his other hand up and rubbed Jinki’s upper arms reassuringly, eyes on his face.

“I saw you sitting really still on the couch after you called my name the first time.” Taemin raised an eyebrow. “You didn’t react at all when I answered you, just sat there. It was pretty creepy, actually. And then you shouted my name a second time and, like, bolted up and just faced me, and the look on your face was really… weird? Like something really bad was happening? I dunno. I started to go see what was going on and you just took out your phone and pointed your flashlight at me. But, like, it was weird – what’s going on Jinki-hyung? Are you feeling okay?” Jinki was still staring and still shaking and he needed to _know_ – “Taemin, what was weird? You said the flashlight was weird.”

Taemin gave him a look. “You staring down the hall, screaming at me, and then silently pointing a flashlight at me was weird enough, hyung.” Taemin paused and Jinki felt all his attention bending towards his words. “But, yeah, it was strange because the light was all distorted – like you were pointing it through water or glass or something. And the light kept shifting, like it was wavering from side to side but like it was coming closer to me or something? And then it got really bright really fast and I felt something on my face and then you were right here.” Taemin chuckled nervously, like he didn’t know what was going on but knew it was something and was beginning to realize it was something a little creepy.

“You felt something on your face?” Jinki couldn’t really hear himself say the words out loud, whether because his whisper was getting fainter or his thoughts were getting louder, but Taemin didn’t seem to have an issue hearing him. He got a strained expression on his face, as if he was thinking hard about how to phrase it. “It was like when Minho was blindfolded at Kibum’s birthday last year and he had to try to find people and guess who they were without anybody saying anything. He had his hands out in front of him and was trying to find someone but I tripped into his back and he just whipped his hands backwards to try to catch me. It felt like his hands reaching backwards and twisting all around trying to grab on to me but slipping because of the awkward angle. I don’t really know what caused it – maybe it was just me remembering that or something?” Taemin seemed perfectly content with leaving it at that, eyes clear as he looked back at Jinki, whose limbs were still trembling faintly. But he was starting to feel less and less afraid, with the hall lights strong above them and Taemin’s hands still stroking his upper arms.

“So are you sure you’re alright, hyung?” Jinki blinked slowly and nodded. He wanted to be alright and he wanted to forget about this. He patted Taemin’s head and stumbled back down the hall, back to the tv and the soju and decided firmly against trying to process any of this for the moment.

Taemin watched him go, arms crossed. Jonghyun’s door opened quietly and his head popped out, checking up and down the hall for Jinki. When he saw Jinki settling into the couch in a daze he made his way over to Taemin. “What exactly was all that?” Taemin smiled at him widely, patting him on the back as he walked them back to their room. “Nothing, really. Just Jinki-hyung’s first ghost, I think.” Jonghyun decided to leave the hall light on that night.


End file.
